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March 01, 2015

Having failed to attain ideal uniformity in a recent batch of croissants, I searched for guidance via YouTube, finding help from a Breton baker who shares the name of a 20th century cowboy novelist. Louis Lamour is a French baker who shares his own terrific stories, albeit of a different genre, drama and tension. Namely tales of baking bread. And Louis is not just wise, he's generous, offering great video coaching and email advice.

According to Louis, I had handicapped my efforts by using a 50/50 mix of white and white whole wheat flour. He suggested sticking with the basic white flour, along with taking more care with timing and temperature. So I did. The results? Spectacular. Merci, Louis, merci!

February 27, 2015

After some clients asked for fresh-baked croissants, I made a small batch. While the layering looked promising, the final product was disappointing. Trying again, I got a crumb that was more cakey then open.

So I put the unused dough in my freezer for a few days. Then putting them in my proofer, the results were great. It may have been due to freezing the dough, but my bet is that croissant success (like much baking) is all about proper fermentation. More testing ahead.

December 02, 2014

This past Thanksgiving weekend, I had a batch of leftover yeast croissant dough in my freezer. Defrosting it, I split it in half. On the first batch, I slept through the bake. The croissants came out with a cakey crumb, no distinct layers, but were crisp and had a flavor that was pleasant but unremarkable.

I ended up using the croissants for sandwich bread.

On my next batch I didn't nap. The results showed. You snooze, you lose.

October 22, 2014

No better time than autumn to try out another sourdough version of croissants! What began on a Sunday with making detrempe, it sat overnight for a cold ferment, then led to folding layers the following morning with butter on Monday just before work. Later that evening after my shift, I went about cutting and shaping. then with the cool, October temperatures overnight, I left these croissants to proof six hours, then baked them. The crumb might have benefited from another 30 minute proof, but they weren't bad. Satisfying and lovely to eat as well as eye.

July 06, 2014

For a long time in proofing croissants, I've used levain rather then adding commercial yeast. Call it purity or foolishness, I call it a challenge. If you don't remember, here's proof of the batch that blew open the doors to my fermentation nirvana. And if you don't want to click, let's just say I ended up with the most perfect croissants in human history. Okay, they were the best I had ever personally made.

Subsequently, my success failed to replicate itself, with me repeatededly proving incapable of remaking magic. It was as if I had forgotten some critical step. Was it underproofing, excessive acidity, weak mixing? It was a mystery, leaving me in a tail spin of croissant insecurity, despondently facing the fact that there would be no matrix of layers for this baker.

To cut to the chase, I dug in and researched and rolled and even thought of throwing in my baker's towel. Was it back to commercial yeast for me? Almost, but first I decided to seek counsel from Aidan Chapman and Dirk Braeckman, both of them bringing up the idea "everything cold," meaning from fermentation to butter. Between the big chill and the big bang hot oven, voila... sproink! My layers returned, just four the fourth of July holiday weekend.

May 24, 2014

Failed sourdoughcroissant efforts have thrown my Viennoisserie prowess back to the drawing board. I made up a batch of hybrid dough,(yeast and sourdough) with 30% durum semolina.The dough sat 15 hours in a refridgerated bulk ferment, a method I got from Ben Rogers in Sussex England at Flour Pot Bakery. The end result was a nice network of layers and flavors. Perhaps using French butter helped. I will make another batch trying a higher percent of durum. And maybe I'll try goat butter, giving it a southern Italian cornetti flare!

April 04, 2014

I'm still aiming to use a grano arso flour mix to use with laminated dough (particularily croissants), but Domenico isn't convinced that French croissants are the answer. That may be due to a sort of Italian chauvanism, but there's also the question of whether I'll even able to extract the flavor of grano arso within layers of fat.

Anyway, I set about making cornetti with spelt and evoo, and here I substituted grano arso. Not a bad effort this time. I should of allowed a longer proof, yet they tasted good, and hada nice crunch. The grano arso is evident in color, but its taste isn't that noticeable.

March 05, 2014

To perfectly laminate croissants with a dough fermented using wild yeast, that has been sort of a "Holy Grail" for me. My latest attempt, tweaked, hand rolled and cut were a huge success. Whoooohooo! Or Holy Moley! It's been a journey, and finally a joy, to achieve success. And lots of experiments. Timing, temperature and a fermentation, with technique adhered to and you have sourdough croissants.

February 26, 2014

Last week I attempted to make some croissants using all levain. Maybe my mojo was off. They were just awful. My friends on Facebook, bakers who do this all day, were aghast and asked, in fact, if it the batch was actually created by my goldfish. Well, my friends, I don't have goldfish!! Worse, I was ridiculed for using a crappy croissant cutter, which was blamed for my mediocre craftsmanship and bin-ready laminated dough.

To make up for it, I tossed the cutter into the garbage, got my levain revved up to bubblelicious state, and chilled my dough after a good ferment in the freezer. Then laminated successfully, I cut this batch by hand the croissants, then rolled the smooth stretchy dough to get the lovely curves and layers that should have been present in my first batch. Of course, I woke up in the wee hours of the night, and checked that my croissants were puffed and ready for egg wash, as well as for a hot oven. Success, here was what I got!

January 28, 2014

Making croissants are a feat any time of the year, but an all-sourdough version is even more daunting. But it's harder in the heat of summer, so I decided to put our recent frost-bitten temperatures to use and give them a try. With the butter chilled, my sourdough fed and primed, I gave my detrempe a five hour ferment , then chilled it again for laminating the dough.

Generally a 3x3 fold is typical, but hoping for more layers, I pushed it to four in total. The final dough stayed overnight in the fridge. The next step was cutting and rolling the dough. I decided to chance an overnight cold ambient kitchen temperature rise for the final proof. Voila, poof, crispy, and layered croissants, magic!